Saturday, February 5, 2011

The Life of a State Dept. Intern

When I told the people in my office about all my internships, they said to me, "What are you? A career intern?" And I guess the short answer is yes. The classroom only takes you so far.
In the Embassy I probably have the second best internship out of everyone. I'm so not trying to toot my own horn, but really, it's true. The guys do Homeland Security roves, the other girls do econ and PR, and one other lucky intern (this is THE best internship...) is part of the chain of assitants to the Ambassador.

I get to catch bad guys. I look at the special cases, all the silly criminals, and all the brilliant ones too. I get to investigate informant calls, document records, and watch some really awesome FSOs interview people who are lying and see beads of sweat roll down their face. It's 30% hilarious, 50% work, 20% ingenuity and 100% fun. No other internship has ever been this awesome for me. I can't say how appreciative I am that the State Dept actually put me to work. My other internships sometimes were... floundering. And even though there's a lot of autonomy in my dept (which is the BEST), everyone in there is really taking care of me too. They're such nice people. I don't even have to fetch coffee!

Working for the State Dept has been like drinking water out of a firehouse. I started out on a steep learning curve 4 weeks ago.... and I'm still on that learning curve. Due to some events in my office, they have a rotating schedule to help other FSOs recognize fraud. Last monday (the beginning of my 4-week mark) I started training people. Me. Their little intern started training federal officers. It is a whole lot of responsibility and I think I'm going to be second-guessing myself for a long time. But it's fun to tell about cases I've already had. In fact, this past week I wrote my first cable. Which, we jokingly declared could someday pop up on wikileaks, and then wouldn't I be oh-so famous?

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